La Nina Develops - What Could This Mean?

Added : Saturday at 14:38

Lots of interesting things going on in the world of weather at the current time and we'll try and take a look at some of them in today's discussion. This week it was announced that La Nina was officially here with cooler than normal sea temperatures being observed across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Officially a weak event, this has sparked some interest across our part of the world as studies have indicated that there is a potential link between weak La Nina events and a colder late autumn/early winter period of weather across northwest Europe, including Britain and Ireland.

Right, let's make it clear right now. This DOES NOT, we repeat does not, automatically translate to cold and snow so if you read anything along those lines ignore it. Even if it does turn cold it doesn't necessarily mean snow as the cold could simply come about courtesy of high pressure bringing plenty of fog and frost.

So with that in mind, what is the latest numerical model output showing? This weekend in fact sees a plunge of cold air from the Arctic across the country as northerly winds develop, but apart from some snow showers over higher parts of Scotland, the main effect will be a much colder feel to the weather with overnight frost:

By midweek it's a fairly benign autumn pattern, many places dry and quiet, but we will have some rain in the north and west. Then as we head towards the end of the week low pressure to the north begins to wind itself up bringing more changeable conditions with it:

Overall nothing out of the ordinary for November. What are watching, however, is developments over the North Pole where high pressure looks set to develop as we go through the week. TheGFS ►andECMWF ►models both show a potential rise of pressure over Greenland with low pressure heading across to Scandinavia which could open the door for Arctic air to move south. Here is theGFS ►for next Sunday:

Differences in the finer details as would be expected at this range, but a look at theGFS ►ensemble output for day 10 shows there is plenty of options going for northern blocking to be a feature, but where and how this transpires will equate to what sort of weather for the second half of November:

Rather cold looks the favoured outcome but despite this signal there is no sign of any significant wintry weather heading our way at this moment in time so no need to dust off the sledges yet, unless you're heading to a Scottish mountain.

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